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James Webb Space Telescope News

James Webb Space Telescope notches crucial maneuver to set its path | Space



Does this mean that the JWST will never look at the direction of the Universe towards the Sun?
That would significantly limit its scientific mission.

It basically means that it would wait for the Earth to pass to that position on its orbit around the Sun exposing its availability to look at that part of the space.

Well, I think we need at least one more JWST sent to the opposite position on the Earth's orbit :D
It's effective arse end / football field sized sun shade will always face the sun.
 
James Webb Space Telescope notches crucial maneuver to set its path | Space



Does this mean that the JWST will never look at the direction of the Universe towards the Sun?
That would significantly limit its scientific mission.
No it woudn't, the Earth itself orbits the Sun and that part of the universe becomes "Viewable" 6 month from any given time.

Right now what can't be viewed (Lets use Dec 25th as the date here) is because of that. That part of the universe can be partially viewed as of around three months from that date (March 25th) and becomes fully viewable half a year from that date (June 25th).
Then the visibilty slowly falls back until it's once again fully blocked by the Sun as it was on that date (Dec 25th).

Same basic effect of the constellations and how they become viewable and seem to go away, but in reality they never really go away, just blocked by the Sun's light so we can't see them.

If expecting the Sun itself to BE an objective, that's not gonna happen.
These light sensitive insturments as indicated will become damaged by the Sun if exposed that way, eliminating their ability to detect distant objects and those will be extremely faint and require the telescope to be sensitive to light for even finding them.
 
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No it woudn't, the Earth itself orbits the Sun and that part of the universe becomes "Viewable" 6 month from any given time.

Right now what can't be viewed (Lets use Dec 25th as the date here) is because of that. That part of the universe can be partially viewed as of around three months from that date (March 25th) and becomes fully viewable half a year from that date (June 25th).
Then the visibilty slowly falls back until it's once again fully blocked by the Sun as it was on that date (Dec 25th).

Yeah, and it will miss the events that happen during its "shadow" pass period.
 
Yeah, and it will miss the events that happen during its "shadow" pass period.
That true but any insturment can only do so much.

We already have a satellite orbiting the Sun gathering data on it now anyway but it's a few years old too, I suspect there is already a newer one in the works by now. As for trying to peek behind the Sun at any give time I'm not aware of anything they have capable of doing that.
 
To a great extent these two terms overlap each other
No they really don't.

A "Perturbation" directly infers an outside influence perturbing the object in question.

An "Instability" directly infers that said object is not stable regardless of outside influence.

The differences might be subtle, but they are distinct.
 
I hope they will publish all the discoveries and findings and not classify new things because of politics.


Does anyone know if anything from the Hubble was classified? I suppose they would never tell us if something was... being a huge field of academics, I doubt anything can be classified... hmm... it would be quite sad if they discovered evidence, likely evidence I should say, of other civilizations but kept it hidden from us. I suppose government does tend to lean on 1984 metrics though, why they are obsessed with power is beyond me, they should instead be more obsessed with their 30 trillion in debt and declining value of the dollar, hehehehe

all nations fall... ah Rome... how I miss traversing the realms of thee halls
 
I would think it'd be hard to classify anything re hubble or James Web due to the huge amount of academic types involved that would likely whistleblow such an action.

all nations fall... ah Rome... how I miss traversing the realms of thee halls
But Ancient Rome's space program sucks (I'm kidding people, I'm well aware it was pretty astrologically aware for its time)
 
I would think it'd be hard to classify anything re hubble or James Web due to the huge amount of academic types involved that would likely whistleblow such an action.


But Ancient Rome's space program sucks (I'm kidding people, I'm well aware it was pretty astrologically aware for its time)

^^ I actually have a lot of respect for the navigators of ancient/medieval times, being so connected to the Cosmos you could navigate the realms with simply the stars and not even a compass... I find truly truly special and something that is quite sad that has been lost to us. Being that connected with nature and the Cosmos must have been very special indeed...
 
^^ I actually have a lot of respect for the navigators of ancient/medieval times, being so connected to the Cosmos you could navigate the realms with simply the stars and not even a compass... I find truly truly special and something that is quite sad that has been lost to us. Being that connected with nature and the Cosmos must have been very special indeed...
I think you'd find it is not as lost as you think amonst the scientific community.
 
Stay on-topic all.

This is about JWST.
 
Does anyone know if anything from the Hubble was classified? I suppose they would never tell us if something was... being a huge field of academics, I doubt anything can be classified... hmm... it would be quite sad if they discovered evidence, likely evidence I should say, of other civilizations but kept it hidden from us. I suppose government does tend to lean on 1984 metrics though, why they are obsessed with power is beyond me, they should instead be more obsessed with their 30 trillion in debt and declining value of the dollar, hehehehe

all nations fall... ah Rome... how I miss traversing the realms of thee halls
A Hubble itself came from classified project & that is why it was "short-sighted". & it has got twins, several ones.

But back to topic. Some 2 years back, when Hubble started to fail - an idea came to retrofit Hubble twin & launch it in space. But the NASA persisted to JWST & we are just some ~10 days away from getting 1st images from new telescope. Looking forward to it! :cool:
 
A Hubble itself came from classified project & that is why it was "short-sighted". & it has got twins, several ones.

But back to topic. Some 2 years back, when Hubble started to fail - an idea came to retrofit Hubble twin & launch it in space. But the NASA persisted to JWST & we are just some ~10 days away from getting 1st images from new telescope. Looking forward to it! :cool:

You still have about 4-6 months to wait for the first JWST images to be released. Dr. Becky verified this on her youtube channel if I remember correctly.
 
You still have about 4-6 months to wait for the first JWST images to be released. Dr. Becky verified this on her youtube channel if I remember correctly.

That is quite poor wasting of time. If the telescope itself has only ten years of planned life, then if you subtract these six months, you get dark perspective.

Expensive and cannot be used optimally.
 
That is quite poor wasting of time. If the telescope itself has only ten years of planned life, then if you subtract these six months, you get dark perspective.

Expensive and cannot be used optimally.

I think you misunderstand, the scientists will be getting the pictures within a month, but they have rights to them to do their research, but public pictures will take 4-6 months.

I sort of wish they would just release them right away though, but the scientists do bid/take turns getting turns with the telescope, and it makes sense they deserve alone time with them to get their papers written and published in journals before releasing to public.
 
Four-six months is an extremely long period of time. I hope you do agree that the scientists who work with it don't need thaaat much time..
 
Four-six months is an extremely long period of time. I hope you do agree that the scientists who work with it don't need thaaat much time..

I imagine the images from the JWST will require a lot of math to interpret them in regards to each individuals hypothesis, but overall yes I agree with you, most could probably summarize and release the image to the public within a few weeks.
 
Folks, @lynx29 is correct. It will be mid April at the earliest before the first in-focus images are are expected to roll in. That's the timeline;

The first images taken will begin at the end of Jan as the first set of mirrors are deployed and they start the alignment process. The first few months worth of images will be wildly out of focus until alignment is complete.
 
the scientists will be getting the pictures within a month, but they have rights to them to do their research, but public pictures will take 4-6 months.
They can release it directly to the “public” and the same time they can do their research. So i see no problems at all.
 
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That is quite poor wasting of time. If the telescope itself has only ten years of planned life, then if you subtract these six months, you get dark perspective.

Expensive and cannot be used optimally.

It's not like the data will be purged. And what would you do with massive data dumps anyway if you don't have the tools to interpret them? The telescope won't send jpgs ready to watch on your phone.
 
It's not like the data will be purged. And what would you do with massive data dumps anyway if you don't have the tools to interpret them? The telescope won't send jpgs ready to watch on your phone.

I do not watch anything on my phone :D And even less so images from the JWST.. lol
 
That is quite poor wasting of time. If the telescope itself has only ten years of planned life, then if you subtract these six months, you get dark perspective.

NASA isn't sitting around with their thumb up their ass "wasting time". This isn't like walking into a room and flicking a switch. This is an incredibly complex device that needs time to reach required thermal, power and physical configuration levels that don't happen overnight. The JWST needs intensive calibration and qualification processes to check out and verify all the instrumentation before it is turned over for scientific use. Trying to use science data before this is meaningless.

Data will be constantly gathered and transmitted back to earth for post processing and analysis. It's not like it will be sitting idle for the first picture to be released to the public before it goes on for more observations. And keep in mind that most of this data won't be in the visible optical range, meaning it will require heavy processing in order to make those beautiful pictures.
 
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Ok, if you say so...
He's right though, it is not even unfolded yet and is not in position.
I don't get your doubts on timing personally.
 
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